“The Irondale Ensemble Project is as close as we come these days to the Elizabethan acting companies that once presented Shakespeare’s plays to the Earl of Leicester, Sir Francis Drake and the Virgin Queen of England. ...What is on offer is the miracle of the word made flesh. I wish you joy in it.” —Lewis Lapham, editor of Lapham’s Quarterly

On August 6, 1945 Takashi Tanemori was an eight year-old child playing in the streets of his home town of Hiroshima, Japan. That morning when the atomic bomb detonated Takashi was orphaned and his life changed forever. After a lifetime of struggling with feelings of vengeance Takashi witnessed the 9/11 attacks. Would the trigger of that atrocity reignite his ire or allow him to resolve his anger and suffering? A spiritual encounter with a butterfly, speaking to him in the voice of his mother, gives Takashi an opportunity to choose between forgiveness and revenge. Is It Already Dusk? is a new physical theater piece by Joan Evans and Harry Rubeck inspired by a real life story. Photo by Virginia Rollison